Solving Mysteries via DNA

Finding Your Roots Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a 10-part series in which the Harvard scholar will delve into the genealogy and genetics of famous Americans. Gates uses history and science, including 23andMe’s ancestry tools, to explore race, family and identify in each episode. With the help from expert genealogists, historians and scientists —two of 23andMe’s own helped in the work — Gates reveals fascinating stories and interesting surprises in the family histories of Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey, Jr., Brandford Marsalis, John Legend, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters and many others.
23andMe’s Senior Director of Research, Joanna Mountain, is a geneticist who worked as a consultant on the series and was interviewed for a few of the episodes. Mountain, who completed her Ph.D. in Genetics at Stanford University, is also a guest blogger for the series. Her post below first appeared on the Finding Your Roots program page. We’re republishing it here with the permission of PBS.

By Joanna Mountain, PhD. Senior Director of Research 23andMe

As a geneticist at 23andMe, I combine my understanding of human prehistory and DNA variation to develop tools that help people answer one of the more fundamental questions we ask ourselves:

“Where am I from?”

It’s always fascinating and often surprising to answer that question, as the powerful stories in PBS’s series “Finding Your Roots” illustrate.

Intriguingly, the question “Where are you from?” has a precise meaning for many eastern Africans, as I learned when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. I always respond to that question with “California,” where I have lived most of my life, rather than “England” where I was born. But unlike many Americans, Kenyans often respond to that question with a description of their ancestral origins — the place and its people. They may never have visited the place or people, but that is where they are “from.”

The answer to this question about our deeper ancestry allows us to connect with our ancestors of hundreds or thousands of years ago. If we go back far enough in human history the answer to the question “where are you from” is the same for everyone:

“We’re from Africa.”

But telling someone that “we are all from Africa” doesn’t really answer the question about a person’s origins.

Our DNA has no sense of where we live or where we were born, but it does point directly to our deeper ancestry and to where our ancestors were living over the last few thousand years. This power of DNA to answer questions about human prehistory is what drew me to genetics in the first place. Solving puzzles and mysteries has always fascinated me.

My passion for genetics is also rooted in Africa, in Kenya specifically, where I taught math and science as a Peace Corps volunteer 25 years ago. The mystery I came across there was in the faces, languages and diets as well as other cultural practices of the people I met. I couldn’t help being fascinated by the diversity. The tall, slender Nilotic-speaking Maasai of southwestern Kenya differ in so many ways from the Bantu-speaking Mijikenda who live on the eastern coast where I was teaching. I left Kenya mystified by the origins of that diversity.

Shortly after I returned home to California, a friend introduced me to a famous geneticist at Stanford University, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who would give me the tools to solve that mystery. Cavalli-Sforza, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, taught me the basics of DNA and the theories of population genetics. Together we poured over genetic data of peoples from all continents. Our goal was to discern the broad patterns of ancient human migrations.

I went on to earn my PhD in genetics, delving more deeply into the mysteries of human prehistory. Throughout my research I returned to focus on Africa, trying to understand the diversity that I had observed in Kenya. My research, conducted with collaborators from around the world, helped reveal the general shape of the history of African peoples over the last 100,000 years. We now believe that the ancestors of living peoples began to move from eastern or southern Africa into other parts of the continent by 75,000 years ago. This early spread within Africa explains the high level of genetic diversity in the continent today. The diversity among the people of Kenya that I noticed over two decades ago, which sparked my interest in the study of genetics, has been explained in part by migrations into eastern Africa of people speaking all the major languages of Africa. We’ve learned this by combining genetic information with archaeological and linguistic evidence.

In the same way that we can understand the diversity within Africa, we can understand the diversity of all living people by studying DNA, archaeology and languages. Both the origins of humankind in Africa and the patterns of subsequent migration within and outside of Africa are written in the DNA of living people. We all share a common history in Africa, but the DNA of people both within Africa and elsewhere has differentiated over time as people migrated across the planet, becoming, until the last few hundred years, more and more isolated from one another.

Now that we know how DNA aligns with prehistoric migrations, we can trace the DNA of individuals to northern Europe or Central Asia, South America or the Near East, western Africa or Oceania. That information about where DNA is from can, in turn, answer questions about our ancestors. Were they struggling to feed their children through hunting red deer in northern Europe, harvesting shellfish in southeastern Asia, raising alpacas in the highland plateaus of western South America, or digging for tubers in eastern Africa? DNA shows that some of us have ancestors who faced the challenge of survival using several of these strategies.

When Henry Louis Gates sits down with his guests and tells them their story of “where they are from” and explains their ancestry, it is a story that was written in their DNA many generations ago.

Joanna Mountain is a geneticist who is a consultant to the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” and consulted previously on the PBS series “Faces of America.” Dr. Mountain completed her PhD in Genetics at Stanford University and has spent over 20 years studying human genetic diversity. Currently, she is Senior Director of Research at 23andMe, Inc.

Good Morning – I would love for 23andme to do some shows on just regular people that do their ancestry and also participant in 23andme and the DNA surname studies. I have been involved in researching my family tree for many years now and also have been a particpant in the Walker Family Tree DNA study for 11 years. We have matched relatives all over the U.S. with none in our mother land. Most of my group traces back to the 1600 in Virginia. My group has members from many different states that have no idea how they got there. One of our members is African American and he too is on 23andme which we show a small match as does a white women from Florida who I know for sure has the same 5th Greats that I have. I have been trying for years now to help the African American with no luck. I think if you do a show on the everyday research of everyday people it would be so interesting and explain who can a 23andme participant find. Me being a women have only matched with my father’s side of the family and non on my mother’s. Need to know what you look for in order to find relatives. Mostly I look to see what % they are matched to me. Those 2 are from my Walker’s father side they and 80% and 70% related. Anyways, just something to think about. Marie Walker Jennings

Marie Jennings

Sorry I forgot to say how I can’t wait for each week to tick by to watch your show – it is so much better I hate to say than Ancestry’s show. Thank you ! Marie

Jennifer Clark Nardiello

I love the show. If you need a nobody to follow, I’m you women. There is a true mystery on this tree.
Jennifer

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